A wide variety of removable storage media exist for use with voice recorders, digital video camcorders, digital cameras, personal digital assistants (PDAs), cellular phones, video games, digital televisions, photo printers, and the like. The removable storage media allow users to capture and store data on such devices, and easily transport the data between these devices and host computers.
One of the most popular types of removable storage media is the flash memory card, which is compact, easy to use, and has no moving parts. A flash memory card includes an internal, high-speed, solid-state memory capable of persistently storing data without application of power. Numerous other types of memory can also be used in memory cards, including electrically-erasable-programmable-read-only-memory (EEPROM), non-volatile random-access-memory (NVRAM), and other non-volatile or volatile memory types, such as synchronous dynamic random-access-memory (SDRAM), with battery backup.
A wide variety of memory cards have been recently introduced, each having different capacities, access speeds, formats, interfaces, and connectors. Examples of memory cards include CompactFlash™ (CF) first introduced by SanDisk™ Corporation, the Memory Stick™ (MS) and subsequent versions including Memory Stick Pro and Memory Stick Duo developed by Sony Corporation, Smart Media™ memory cards, Secure Digital (SD) memory cards, and MultiMedia Cards (MMCs) jointly developed by SanDisk Corporation and Siemens AG/Infineon Technologies AG, and xD™ digital memory cards developed by Fuji. Many other memory card standards continue to emerge and evolve.
Each of the different memory cards typically has an external interface, which defines the electrical and mechanical connection interfaces of the card. Each different memory card generally requires a specialized adapter or reader for use with a host computing device. The adapter or reader includes an internal interface that conforms to the external interface of the memory card. In addition, the adapter or reader also includes an external interface that can be accepted by a host computer. Thus, the adaptor or reader includes both an internal interface to receive a memory card and an external interface to connect to a host computer. The internal interface of the adaptor or reader may comply with a memory card standard, and the external interface may comply with a host standard. Examples of host standards include personal computer memory card international association (PCMCIA) standards such as the 16 bit standard PC Card standard and the 32 bit CardBus standard, the Universal Serial Bus (USB) standard, the Universal Serial Bus 2 (USB2) standard, the IEEE 1394 FireWire standard, the Small Computer System Standard (SCSI) standard, the Advance Technology Attachment (ATA) standard, the serial ATA standard, the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) standard, the PCI Express standard, a serial or parallel standard, or the like.
More recently, memory card form factors have become significantly smaller. Such “small” memory cards are commonly referred to as “mini” memory cards or “micro” memory cards. In this disclosure, micro-memory cards are defined as any memory card whose dimensions (both length and width) are less than 22 millimeters. Many of the memory card standards listed above now produce corresponding “micro” versions of the respective cards. In particular, current micro-memory cards include miniSD, microSD, MMCmicro and MSmicro to name a few. These micro-memory cards may be accepted by some devices that include micro-sized ports, which are sized for the micro-memory cards. However, other devices that accept the conventionally-sized versions of the respective cards may require a micro-memory card adaptor to read the micro-memory cards.